It is often stated that urban growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America is explosive, unprecedented and out of control. For instance, "...it is in the Third World that the urban explosion is taking place" and the "...health and well-being of literally hundreds of millions of men, and especially women and children, are threatened by an urban population explosion in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America." These are typical of the kinds of general comments made about urban change in Africa, Asia and Latin America. A paper in Foreign Affairs in 1996 was entitled "The exploding cities of the developing world" . An article in Newsweek in 1994 talked about Asian mega cities running riot, driven by explosive economic and population growth. It is also often assumed that not only is rapid urbanization taking place all over Africa, Asia and Latin America but that it will continue. For instance "Unrestrained rural-to-urban migration has caused rapid urban growth in all countries in the developing world and is expected to continue." Most of this is untrue or at best partially true. The predictions are unlikely to come true.

... More than half the world's population live in cities

The latest census data shows that the world was less urbanized in 2000 than had been expected. The date at which the world's urban population grows to exceed that of its rural population has been delayed; this transition had been expected in the late 1990s but is now predicted to happen around 2007. The world's urban population in 2000 had 270 million people fewer than had been predicted twenty years previously. As a later section describes in more detail, many nations had much slower urban population growth rates than anticipated during the 1980s and 1990s, in part because of serious economic problems. For most nations, urban population growth rates also dropped due to falling fertility rates. For some, it was also because of rising mortality rates. By the late 1990s, this included large and growing levels of mortality from HIV/AIDS. This is particularly apparent in certain sub-Saharan African nations with high levels of infection and the absence of drugs to control it. This problem is reshaping urban trends in many nations. The world's urban population may soon come to outnumber its rural population but this is not the same as half the world population living in cities because the proportion of people in cities is considerably below the proportion living in urban centres. There are thousands of settlements in Africa, Asia and Latin America (and also North America and Europe) that are classified by their national governments as urban centres but which lack the economic, administrative or political status that would normally be considered as criteria for classification as a city... (the full text is available in the pdf file)

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... "The speed of urban change in poorer nations is unprecedented with new cities mushrooming everywhere and with Africa, Asia and Latin America having the fastest growing cities"

Myth 6
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The scale of urban change over the last fifty years is unprecedented. But the speed of urban change in low and middle income nations is not unprecedented. There are many historical precedents of nations with faster increases in their levels of urbanization than most of those taking place in recent decades in low and middle income nations. Many high income nations underwent periods when they had greater increases in their level of urbanization over a 30 year period than that experienced by most low and middle income nations. For instance, the level of urbanization in Japan increased from 24 percent in 1930 to 64 percent in 1960; that in the UK went from 37.1 percent to 60.6 percent between 1850 and 1880. The change in the level of urbanization in low and middle income nations between 1950 and 1975 was comparable to that in Europe and North America between 1875 and 1900. The rates of net rural to urban migration required to achieve these increases may have been greater in Europe and North America in the late 19th century than in low and middle income nations from 1950-1975 in view of the fact that the rates of natural increase in rural areas were probably higher than those in urban areas at that time... (the full text is available in the pdf file)

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